Business
How Hard It Is to Make Trade Deals
President Trump has announced wave after wave of tariffs since taking office in January, part of a sweeping effort that he has argued would secure better trade terms with other countries. “It’s called negotiation,” he recently said.
In April, administration officials vowed to sign trade deals with as many as 90 countries in 90 days. The ambitious target came after Mr. Trump announced, and then rolled back a portion of, steep tariffs that in some cases meant import taxes cost more than the wholesale price of a good itself.
The 90-day goal, however, is a tenth of the time it usually takes to reach a trade deal, according to a New York Times analysis of major agreements with the United States currently in effect, raising questions about how realistic the administration’s target may be. It typically takes 917 days, or roughly two and a half years, for a trade deal to go from initial talks to the president’s desk for signature, the analysis shows.
Roughly 60 days into the current process, Mr. Trump has so far announced only one deal: a pact with Britain, which is not one of America’s biggest trading partners.
He has also suggested that negotiations with China have been rocky. “I like President XI of China, always have, and always will, but he is VERY TOUGH, AND EXTREMELY HARD TO MAKE A DEAL WITH!!!” Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social on Wednesday. China and the United States agreed last month to temporarily slash tariffs on each other’s imports in a gesture of good will to continue talks.
Part of what the president can accomplish boils down to what you can call a deal.
The pact with Britain is less of a deal than it is a framework for talking about a deal, said Wendy Cutler, the vice president of the Asia Society Policy Institute and a former U.S. trade negotiator. What was officially released by the two nations more closely resembled talking points for “what you were going to negotiate versus the actual commitment,” she said.
During his first term, Mr. Trump secured two major trade agreements, both signed in January 2020. One was the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which was a reworking of the North American free trade treaty from the 1990s that had helped transform the economies of the three nations.
U.S.M.C.A. is an all-encompassing, legally binding agreement that resulted from a lengthy and formal process, according to trade analysts.
Such deals are supposed to cover all aspects of trade between the respective nations and are negotiated under specific guidelines for congressional consultation. Closing the deal involves both negotiation and ratification — modifying or making laws in each partner country. The deals are signed by trade negotiators before the president signs the legislation that puts it into effect for the United States.
Mr. Trump’s other major agreement in his first term was with China, in an echo of the current trade war. The pact, unlike previous deals, came about after Mr. Trump threatened tariffs on certain Chinese imports. This “tariff first, talk later” approach, said Inu Manak, a trade policy fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, is part of the same playbook the administration is currently using.
The result was a nonbinding agreement between the two countries, known as “Phase One,” that did not require approval from Congress and that could be ended by either party at any time. Still, it took almost one year and nine months to complete. China ultimately fell far short of the commitments it made to purchase American goods under the agreement.
A comparison of the two first-term Trump deals shows the drawn-out and sometimes winding paths each took to completion. Fragile truces (including ones made for 90 days) were formed, only for talks to break down later, all while rounds of tariffs injected uncertainty into the diplomatic relations between countries.
The Times analysis used the date from the start of negotiations to the date when the president signed to determine the length of deal making for each major agreement dating back to 1985 that’s currently in effect. The median time it took to get to the president’s signature was just over 900 days. (A separate analysis published in 2016 by the Peterson Institute for International Economics used the date of signature by country representatives as the completion moment and found that the median deal took more than 570 days.)
With roughly one month before the administration’s self-imposed deadline, Mr. Trump’s ability to forge deals has been thrust into sudden doubt. Last week, a U.S. trade court ruled he had overstepped his authority in imposing the April tariffs.
For now, the tariffs remain in place, following a temporary stay from a federal appeals court. But in arguing its case, the federal government initially said that the ruling could upset negotiations with other nations and undercut the president’s leverage.
In a statement on Wednesday, Kush Desai, a White House spokesman, said that trade negotiators were working to secure “custom-made trade deals at lightning speed that level the playing field for American industries and workers.”
But in other recent public statements, White House officials have significantly pared back their ambitions for the deals.
In April, Scott Bessent, the Treasury secretary, hedged the number of agreements they might reach, suggesting that the United States would talk to somewhere between 50 and 70 countries. Last month he said the United States was negotiating with 17 “very important trading relationships,” not including China.
“I think when the administration first started, they thought they could actually do these binding and enforceable deals within 90 days and then quickly realized that they bit off more than they could chew,” Ms. Cutler said.
The administration told its negotiating partners to submit offers of trade concessions they were willing to make by Wednesday, in an effort to strike trade deals in the coming weeks. The deadline was earlier reported by Reuters.
The current approach to deal making may be strategic, Ms. Manak said. One of the benefits of not doing a comprehensive deal like U.S.M.C.A. is that the administration can declare small “victories” on a much faster timeline, she said.
“It means that trade agreements simply are just not what they used to be,” she added. “And you can’t really guarantee that whatever the U.S. promises is actually going to be upheld in the long run.”
Data and graphics are based on a New York Times analysis of information from the Congressional Research Service, the U.S. Trade Representative, the Organization of American States’ Foreign Trade Information System and public White House communications.
Business
Billionaire exodus? California drew 10 times more venture capital than any other state this year
Despite concerns that California’s costs and regulations are bad for business, the state has attracted an unprecedented pile of capital this year, and no other state is even close.
The Golden State’s deep pool of talent, rich investors and other tech infrastructure have made it ground zero for the artificial intelligence explosion. That has helped it attract more than $335 billion in venture capital funding this year, according to PitchBook’s private market funding data released Thursday.
Its next biggest competitor, New York, raised less than a tenth of California’s total. Texas raised 1/40th of the amount.
“California has far and away the most [deals], obviously, a huge amount of that sits in the [San Francisco] Bay Area,” said Kyle Stanford, director of U.S. venture capital research at PitchBook. “Los Angeles, San Diego has a really strong tech market that I think benefits a lot from capital moving easily between San Francisco and L.A.”
Although a campaign for a new tax on billionaires has convinced some ultra-rich residents to shift to other states and businesses often complain that high property and energy costs and an anti-business regulatory regime make it too tough to make money in the state, the inability of the top talent, companies and investors in AI to set up elsewhere shows California’s enduring attraction.
The state’s economy grew 5% last year to a record $4.25 trillion, making it larger than every country other than the U.S., China and Germany. It is home to nearly 400 billion-dollar startups — more than any other state, according to CB Insights.
Southern California has emerged as a go-to address for fast-growing space and defense tech companies.
“California’s workers, entrepreneurs, and innovators continue to prove that investing in California delivers real results,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement last week in response to strong productivity numbers for the state. “As one of the largest economies in the world, the Golden State demonstrates that a strong workforce, economic growth, innovation, and performance go hand in hand.”
In the three months that ended in June, 1,087 California companies raised $108.8 billion in venture capital. Just three companies — Anthropic, Jeff Bezos’ Project Prometheus and Anduril Industries — absorbed 75% of that total. Anthropic alone raised $65 billion, which valued it at nearly $1 trillion.
Among metropolitan regions, Los Angeles ranked behind only Silicon Valley and New York, which attracted $98 billion and $11.5 billion in venture investment, respectively.
“Capital is flowing back into American innovation with real force,” said Bobby Franklin, president of the National Venture Capital Assn., an industry group that put out the report with PitchBook. “Investment activity is picking up, fundraising is improving, and there are early signs the IPO market is beginning to reopen.”
Investors poured in nearly $8 billion across 207 deals in the Los Angeles, Long Beach, and Santa Ana metro areas, up 28% from a year earlier, according to PitchBook.
The top deals in the region were led by aerospace and defense companies Anduril Industries, which raised $5 billion, and Impulse Space, which attracted $500 million.
Companies in industrial parts, software, consulting and life sciences were the other sectors in the Southland that attracted venture investments. El Segundo-based industrial supplies company Advanced Manufacturing Company of America and Huntington Beach-based aerospace company Mach Industries each raised $300 million.
To be sure, the surge in the size and number of monster deals could be overshadowing other money-raising efforts from smaller companies and investment by smaller funds, industry experts said.
Nearly 90% of invested dollars went to AI firms, up from last year, when around 65% of new funds were allocated to AI.
“If you’re a tech company and you’re not an AI company, you have a very, very difficult opportunity ahead of you to raise capital,” Stanford said.
This concentration of capital in AI leaves smaller, middle-of-the-road venture funds without large AI holdings struggling to return capital to their investors.
Only the largest funds, such as Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital — which possess the war chest to back OpenAI, Anthropic, and SpaceX — stand to gain from their initial public offerings of stock.
“It’s going to concentrate the fundraising over the next few years as well into these already very large names,” Stanford said.
Beyond the two potential blockbuster listings — Anthropic and OpenAI, each valued around $1 trillion — the IPO pipeline is thin.
“We don’t really have a strong IPO market,” Stanford said. “Obviously, SpaceX’s IPO is great. OpenAI and Anthropic, if they go out this year, will be very large drivers of distribution. But a vast majority of investors do not have exposure to them, and so that money will not make it back to them.”
Whether California’s venture-investing boom can continue at this record-breaking pace now hinges on how the IPOs of Anthropic and OpenAI perform.
“If Anthropic and OpenAI have really strong financials, that’s a big push of support for the rest of the market,” Stanford said.
Waymo, the driverless taxi company that operates in more than 10 cities, will soon serve customers in San Diego.
The company has been testing its autonomous vehicles in San Diego with a safety driver behind the wheel since earlier this year. Rides without a human driver became available to employees Thursday and will open to members of the public later this year.
Waymo, which announced the expansion Wednesday, will also bring its taxis to Tampa, Las Vegas and Denver.
“If you’re in one of these four new cities, download the app to be notified when it’s time to ride,” the company said in a blog post.
Waymo has offered fully autonomous rides in San Francisco since 2022 and in Los Angeles since 2024.
It also serves customers in Nashville, Phoenix, Miami and other cities.
In May, Waymo launched a cheaper robotaxi dubbed the Ojai, which is better equipped for difficult driving conditions such as snowy roads.
The Ojai will supplement Waymo’s fleet of Jaguar I-Paces, the company said. In San Diego, services will be provided with the Ojai.
Waymo also announced Wednesday it’s beginning autonomous driving with a safety driver in its newest retrofitted vehicle, the Hyundai IONIQ 5.
“This phase allows us to validate our technology for fully autonomous operations as we work to bring riders even more ways to enjoy Waymo in the future,” the company said.
The company plans to eventually have tens of thousands of driverless taxis made per year, starting with the Ojai, then scaling using the IONIQ 5s.
The move into San Diego and three other cities widens the gap between Waymo and its competitors in the robotaxi race.
Elon Musk’s Tesla robotaxis and Amazon-owned Zoox are shuttling customers autonomously, but are nowhere near the scale at which Waymo operates.
Other companies are working on autonomous trucks and freight trains.
Waymo’s San Diego service area will include Pacific Beach, Normal Heights, La Playa and Southcrest, among other neighborhoods, the company said.
StubHub is getting a red card from some World Cup fans
Two World Cup customers are suing the New York-based ticket-selling company, alleging “false and misleading” advertising that left them without tickets or a refund for the World Cup games they paid to attend.
In federal court in New York last week, two Californians — Julia Reeker Moghal and Reuben Renteria — sued StubHub seeking monetary damages and a ban on the company selling World Cup tickets. The lawsuit aims to become a class action and comes after weeks of fierce criticism and complaints from customers regarding the company’s practices.
Throughout the World Cup, videos have emerged on Instagram and TikTok of StubHub customers describing their nightmare experiences with the ticket-selling platform.
Some said they had purchased tickets to World Cup games as early as November of last year, booked flights and hotels and arranged travel plans, then StubHub notified them days to weeks before the match of a refund for their tickets, which they never requested.
There were similar complaints about last-minute cancellations from people who bought Coachella tickets on StubHub.
In the lawsuit, Moghal said she had purchased three tickets for nearly $2,000 for the June 18 match between Switzerland and Bosnia-Herzegovina at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, which were then canceled by StubHub. Moghal said she was contacted by StubHub and told her tickets would remain canceled, then was later told the tickets would be available one hour before the game.
When the match began, Moghal said she was at SoFi Stadium, but the tickets never came.
Renteria said he paid around $2,300 for the June 18 Mexico versus South Korea match in Guadalajara, Mexico, but they were canceled
“Devoted soccer fans have traveled from around the world to attend World Cup matches — and they reasonably relied on StubHub to provide the tickets they paid for as well as on StubHub’s warranty,” Blake Hunter Yagman, the attorney representing the two, said in a statement. “Instead of rewarding their business, StubHub sold them World Cup tickets that they either could not provide or on speculation, only to be stranded, in many cases, at the stadium gates without any recourse.”
According to StubHub’s website, its Fan Protect Guarantee states the platform will deliver valid tickets or refund in the event of a ticket issue, and that it will “go out of our way to find replacement tickets” of a comparable value. The lawsuit alleges the replacement tickets many fans were given by StubHub were worse than their original tickets.
FIFA, the World Cup organizer, states in its terms and conditions that the FIFA Marketplace, its own ticket-selling platform, is the only authorized platform for World Cup tickets, and that only tickets purchased through it are guaranteed by FIFA to be valid.
Despite the risk of purchasing through a third-party platform such as StubHub, many fans opted to do so to avoid the 30% FIFA resale tax, believing that the Fan Protect Guarantee would safeguard their order.
Since World Cup tickets began selling on FIFA Marketplace last September, fans have expressed disappointment in the expensive price tag. FIFA utilized a dynamic pricing system for the sale, and as sales phases progressed leading up to the games, the cost of tickets increased tremendously. In March, the extreme cost of tickets prompted 69 members of Congress to write a letter to FIFA urging them to lower their prices.
Tickets for the upcoming Friday match between Spain and Belgium in Los Angeles are selling on StubHub for over $1,300.
StubHub said in various statements to the news and in legal proceedings that ticket cancellations were a result of transfer problems and issues with FIFA’s ticketing infrastructure.
StubHub did not respond to requests for comment.
A FIFA spokesperson responded to this accusation in a statement, saying, “FIFA has no visibility over, or control of, secondary market ticket transactions carried out on third-party platforms. The transactions facilitated on these platforms occur entirely independently of FIFA’s official ticketing platform. With reference to the reliability of the services available to fans on FIFA’s official ticket platform, FIFA rejects any suggestion that the functional issues being experienced by users of third-party platforms with respect to FIFA World Cup 2026 tickets are the result of FIFA’s ticketing infrastructure.”
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